We're looking at the MSI R9 380 Gaming 4G, a card that boasts a custom heatsink, improved power design, and a factory overclock, all for a modest premium of only an extra $25. Sounds pretty good so far. Factor in that AMD is bringing a few new features to the market with the R9 300 series launch, and we're cautiously optimistic for strong gaming value.

Today we're focusing on two cards from HIS, a company we're very familiar with, having seen many of their products in the past couple of generations in AMD cards. HIS typically produces cards with custom coolers and aggressive factory overclocks, but these two are a bit different. The R7 260X and R7 250X are budget-oriented cards for those with modest budgets and looking for some affordable gaming, and perhaps even something suitable for an HTPC setup.

Today we're looking at the HIS R9 280 IceQ X2, a mid-range performance graphics card that retails for around $260. We've been impressed with cards from HIS in the past, particularly those with the vaunted IceQ cooler, which has proven to be very impressive with low temperatures and noise levels. Can this card continue the trend? Lt's take a closer look at the HIS R9 280 IceQ X2 to find out.

When AMD announced the launch of the new FM2+ based socket for the up coming "Kaveri" APU Processor, manufacturers were in full force with the launch of new motherboards. Over the next few weeks we caught a glimpse of the up coming releases, and its design and aesthetics caught our attention. In the past, we have seen some nice products for the APU socket line, but the motherboards were never as fancy as some of the enthusiast boards we have come to see with the higher end chipsets and processors, like the AMD FX Series, the 990FX chipset line.
With AMD's FX Series road map unclear, and AMD's APU series processors rising success, it was only a matter of time before we start to see more enthusiast style motherboards hit the market. Today, we have the pleasure of taking a look at an ASUS motherboard that sports the fancy aesthetics and brings to the table the full enthusiast experience that the APU market has missed out on before.
Today we have the ASUS A88X-Pro Motherboard which runs the flagship A88X chipset. This is one of the 3 chipsets launched for the FM2+ based Kaveri APU. So, the question that most of us have today is does all this fancy aesthetic meet the demands of an enthusiast's desire? Well today we are going to put the ASUS A88X Motherboard to the test and find out.

AMD's APU series market has really picked up pace over the last few years. The most recent updates to their current road map, included the new FM2+ socket A88X based chipset and the Kaveri Processor. This has really generated a great deal of interest with many of today's budget conscious consumers. However, with no updates to AMD's enthusiast FX series chip road map, AMD's APU series is really the only new technology we are seeing at the moment from its consumer line. With that said, we are excited to see that AMD is starting to put more budget friendly APU technology out in the market and we are going to shed some light on what to expect. Today we are looking at a very new low-budget APU inspired motherboard. It includes the Kabini SoC processor (which runs the Jaguar APU Cores) on a Radeon HD8000 series graphics base, and it does it all in a tight nit space.
At the beginning of the year, ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) announced this Kabini SoC processing unit which houses an AMD A6-5200 CPU. It also includes a Radeon 8400 GPU all in a small mini-ITX form factor APU combo. Today we got our nitty gritty hands on this tiny power house to put it to the test. We are excited to see what this Quad Core A6-5200 APU can do. Before we jump into the details of the ECS KBN-I/5200 motherboard, lets take a look at ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems).

We're focusing on the ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP, an upper-range peformance card that retails around $420. ASUS is a company that continues to challenge notions and offer cutting edge technology for enthusiasts, and as a result, we've come to expect big things from ASUS. In terms of competition, the R9 280X is positioned against Nvidia's GTX 770, but as you'll see in testing, it's not quite that simple, as there are some apples and oranges comparisons here in terms of features; after all, gaming framerates only tell part of the story. So, let's take a closer look at the ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP to find out how it measures up.

Today we're focusing on the Sapphire R9 290, an enthusiast-classed peformance card that's a reference design. We typically see custom cards from Sapphire, and that may yet be in store in the not-too-distant future, but for now the R9 290 is Sapphire's competition against Nvidia's GTX 780. Looking to offer excellent performance for higher-resolution gaming, the R9 290 looks to be a powerhouse. Let's delve a bit deeper into the details with a closer look at the Sapphire R9 290 to find out how it measures up.

We're focusing on two cards from HIS, a company we're very familiar with, having seen many of their products in the past couple of generations in AMD cards. HIS typically produces cards with custom coolers and aggressive factory overclocks, and these two are no different. The R7 260X iPower IceQ X2 and R9 270X iCooler IceQ X2 Turbo have excessively long names, but more to the point: they are sleek, come with impressive overclocks, and look to offer good gaming value. Let's take a closer look at these cards to find out how they measure up.

Introduction In this ever-blossoming technology industry there are smaller companies that are often overshadowed by their behemoth competitors. There are many reasons why this occurs but one of the most common assumptions is that the smaller company is lower quality. The thinking has been that the smaller guy can’t make a product as well as the bigger guy. VisionTek has been striving to prove that assumption to be false. They believe they can be a smaller company yet still offer quality and value. VisionTek sent us the new Radeon R9-280X AMD based GPU to see how well their promise holds up. We will take a moment to learn about VisionTek before we put the R9-280X through some tests. http://www.visiontekproducts.com/ VisionTek Products, LLC is a leading supplier of personal computer enhancement products to retailers and consumers. Based out of East Dundee, IL, VisionTek brings the most innovative and best performing products to the PC enthusiast consumer market and further committed to exemplary customer service and support for all of our products. VisionTek has been widely recognized as a pioneer in producing graphic cards. Our other component areas are such as memory, solid state drives, power supplies, candyboards, gaming network cards, and TV Tuners. VisionTek’s award winning brand has been a leader for years and continues to set the standard for excellence in the market. VisionTek products can be found at leading retailers, distributors, PC syst...

The folks at VisionTek just yesterday announced their newest GPU designed to crush the competition. They introduced the Radeon R9 290X as the “fastest graphics card available.” It’s probably not an exaggeration either. The new R9 290X is packing some serious power under the hood. With a 1GHz clock speed, 2816 Stream Processors and 4GB 512bit GDDR5 RAM, it can achieve a compute performance over 5.6 TFLOPs! It’s truly amazing to see just how far graphics technology continues to evolve from AMD, and VisionTek really did a fantastic job running with AMD’s ball. Not only that, but the retail price of this product will shock you, and we don’t mean sticker shock! On the contrary, some folks were expecting a $600-700 card, but it turns out this baby is only $549! It’s hard to argue the knock-out combination of incredible performance mixed with an affordable price. Here’s the full press release below for more details, VisionTek Radeon R9 290X Introduced As Fastest Graphics Card Available New ultra-performance card delivering 5.6 TFLOPs, 4x higher resolution of 1080p, intelligent overclocking, and professional grade audio priced at $549 and shipping by early November October 24, 2013, East Dundee, IL – VisionTek Products LLC, (VisionTek®) http://www.visiontek.com, a leading manufacturer of award-winning, high-performance upgrades and accessories for PC and Apple Macintosh® computers, announced today the VisionTek ...

With AMD's latest launch, today we're looking at the MSI R9 270X HAWK, a mid-range graphics card that boasts a custom heatsink, improved power design, and a factory overclock, all for a modest price of $220. Sounds pretty good so far. Factor in that AMD is bringing a host of new features to the market with the R9 series launch, and we're cautiously optimistic for big things. Let's take a closer look at the MSI R9 270X HAWK to find out how it measures up.

We've previously seen two Devil-branded cards from PowerColor, the behemoth 7990 and a previous-gen 6970, both of which are (or were) flagship premium cards. But the Devil HD 7870 2GB is a mid-range card, coming with an attractive price tag of $260. It's a bit unusual to see a custom cooler, improved power design, and attention to detail on such a modestly priced card, but we certainly approve of the move by PowerColor; better for consumers, we say.

The Diamond Radeon 7790 comes with a shorter PCB design, custom cooler cooler and a strong factory overclock that reaches well over 1GHz. What's particularly enticing is this Diamond card also qualifies for the popular AMD promotional offer that tosses in three A+ gaming titles into the package for some outstanding bonus value. Looks like a great deal, so let’s take a closer look at the Diamond Radeon HD 7790 and see how it fares.

Adding a second card to boost gaming performance certainly has its positives, but a few potential downsides can exist. Does it make sense to add a second HIS card or upgrade to a 7970 instead? Let's find out as we look at the HIS iPower IceQ Turbo in single card and CrossFire configurations.